Some Comments from the Author of My Year in Oman about his Book

My Year in Oman: An American Experience in Arabia During the War On Terror

    The country is called the Sultanate of Oman because it is ruled by a singular figure in the form of a generous and caring despot named Sultan Qaboos bin Said who, though a small and thin man, carries the most weight in the Arabian world when it comes to enlightened counsel and settling the disagreements of other nations. My Year in Oman: An American Experience in Arabia is in fact the Sultan's story as much as my own, because without the work that he commissioned in modernizing his country on a Biblical scale, I wouldn't have been invited to teach at a university there and I would most likely have much less of a story to tell.

     My Year in Oman is about the mixing of cultures, something that has been done for thousands of years on this geographically strategic area of the world where India, Asia, the Persian Gulf and Africa are all relatively easily accessible by ship. My Year in Oman is, in a tongue-in-cheek way, a vehicle to highlight the author's stereotypically American manner of thinking.

     I first considered writing My Year in Oman, within the first few days I was in the country, based simply on the events that occur at the beginning of the book. I figured if that much had happened, there had to be much more coming that would be interesting and something people where I lived would never, ever experience, nor, most likely, even comprehend. I started My Year in Oman, the second year of my contract at the university where I was teaching. I was sure by then I had more than enough to write about. I will let the reader be the judge of that, although the size of the book is an indication there were at least a few events worth noting.

      More than anything else though, as I relate in my second book, Another Year in Oman, I knew that I was experiencing what I refer to ingeniously as the "Old Oman" with unpaved roads, small populations and enough infrastructure to keep the Omanis comfortable as long as they had more and more roads, buildings, houses, cars, electricity, water and money. 

     I wanted people to understand what the Omani culture was really like, but I also wanted people to see the places, to breathe the warm sea air and feel the sweat from the oppressive humid heat against the coolness of the open sea as I undertook solitary snorkeling trips into the Gulf. I wanted to share the Arabian desert at night, the dawn and the height of noon-day. I wanted people to experience my first mornings eating breakfast in a five-star hotel watching the dark blue waves hitting the brown sand beaches of the Gulf of Oman as the temperature intensive sun climbed into the sky. 

      However, more than the story itself, I hope the insights I am able to offer about Oman's history, and the stories of my interactions with the Omani's themselves will give the reader a more accurate understanding of the Arab Culture than they might learn anywhere else, or in such an entertaining way. I hope that with the understanding, we might someday be able to relate to each other in a more humane and civilized fashion.

Matthew D. Heines